We are all Palestinians

Thanks to the signature of Barak Obusha, on the National Defense Authorization Act, 2012 promises to be a bumper year, for one of the only US markets still enjoying growth; the ‘security’ and prisons industry. The bill, leaves some politicians queasy, even Obama said, pen poised, “The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it’. But the smell of profits to be made and the pressure to mimic current de regulation on all legal matters related to ‘terrorism’, allowed him to fight back the tears and sign anyway.

The signatories of the NDAA and its Zionist cheer leaders in the background, desire that this latest attack on the Bill of Rights allow them to lock up whoever they (dis) like, for as long as they like.

I have a prediction to make; The NDAA will turn out to be the biggest political mistake since 9/11. For, like 9/11, far from rallying the world behind the star spangled banner, in less than five years, the chant

‘We are all Palestinians!’

will, ring across Middle America. Why? As the US government increasingly locks up the Working Joe for taking to the streets, unemployed Americans will demand to know – in detail – where their nations wealth has gone. And, we, the 99 per centers worldwide, will be online to tell them; your government’s support for Israel and its warmongering – is behind your losses. Losses not only in influence, but in popularity, trust and bucks. During Fiscal Year 2011, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.2 million per day in military aid. Cast across the previous decades the bloody cashflow to the Zionist cause runs into billions.

As Americans awake from their slumber, they will have reason to empathize with the Palestinian cause for more, than mere debt. You see, Obama’s latest wheeze, the NDAA, has been piloted for over sixty years, in Palestine. Its roots are in the British mandate and the Emergency Law of 1945. This snatch and detain law, was moulded by the Zionist regime into Palestine Military Order 1226 (1988). To this day, Order 1226 empowers military commanders to detain Palestinian residents, for up to six months, if there are;

reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention.”

To see where members of the Occupy Wall Street Movement may be in five years time, US protestors should study the Palestinian experience.

Like the shady ‘evidence’ used to incarcerate Muslims in Bagram and Guantanemo (now in its tenth inauspicious year), administrative detention orders in Palestine, are often based on secret evidence. Evidence, collected by the Israeli Security Agency (ISA). In contravention to any recognizable jurisprudence, neither the detainee, nor the detainee’s lawyers are given access to the supposed ‘evidence’ for their incarceration. This has allowed the kidnap, of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, adults and politicians, from checkpoints, or even their own homes to continue for decades. Kidnappings, followed by detentions which, after the initial six-month period ends, can (and often will be) extended by additional six month periods indefinitely.

Essential phrases in Palestine Military Order 1226 and the NDAA, are deliberately oblique to allow widespread injustice to take place. The Israeli authorities have never bothered to define what constitutes a threat to “public security” in relation to the thousands of Palestinian captives it labels and detains, as such. Mirroring the actions of his buddies in the Knesset and the IOF, Obomber, signed the NDAA leaving the term ‘belligerent Act’ as an undefined, catch-all (literally), phrase. We don’t have to dig too deeply to find out what kinds of acts the US administration has in mind though. The Department for Homeland Security has already branded those who protested the national reserve as ‘Domestic Belligerents’. Therefore, in the eyes of the Federal Government – a threat to national security. Back in 2009, The Department of Homeland Security sent a confidential memo to law enforcement in Missouri. This memo listed supporters of several political candidates as potential terrorists. On the list, alongside Neo-nazi’s and bombers of abortion clinics were US citizens opposed to – guess what – the criminal behaviour on Wall Street and income tax.

These issues (and the right to demonstrate in relation to them) are Middle America’s, Al Quds, Jerusalem. Namely, issues central to their national sense of self. They will not just be brushed under the carpet easily. Also in 2009, materials used to train Department of Defense personnel listed protesting, as a form of terrorism. Seriously. It would make you laugh, if it weren’t so scary. In a Level 1, Anti-terrorism Awareness course, participants were asked, “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” To which the ‘correct’ answer, was “protests.” The other options in the multiple choice were; attacking the Pentagon, committing hate crimes and using IED’s.

In Palestine this month, Issa Qaraqi, of the prisoners’ movement has said, detainees will emulate the Irish prison strike of 1981. 400 hundred incarcerated Palestinians, including the sick, the elderly and women, are embarking on a mass fast. To the death, if necessary. The most desperate cry yet to the international community to condemn the loose phalanx of ‘laws’ used to harass and oppress civilians of all ages.

Latest data issued by the Statistics Department of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners, shows that 4,500 Palestinians, are currently held in Israeli jails. Before you get excited and shout ‘Hamas deal!’ – that figure takes into account the release of 1,027 men and women as part of the exchange for Gilad Shalit. In addition to the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and detention camps, there are dozens of Arabs of various nationalities, especially from Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

Nor are these figures static, due to the daily arrests of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces; more than 3,300 people were arrested in the past twelve months, with an average of nine arrests a day.

According to official figures, there are now more than 130 children (defined as young people under the age of 18) amongst the Palestinian prisoner numbers, in addition to hundreds of others, who have been arrested as children, but reached adulthood whilst in prison. 240 prisoners are held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial as well as 24 elected legislators, former ministers and political leaders; and hundreds of sick and disabled prisoners who suffer from various illnesses, including cancer.

And so to Pennsylvania, where activists have apparently faced terrorism charges for writing slogans in chalk on sidewalks. In California, 27 individuals are set to go on trial for protest actions. The FBI currently boasts 164,000 suspicious activity reports – seeking to criminalize activists who do not follow the governments militaristic, or even taxation, viewpoint. It is no longer Muslim Americans only who are at risk of Israeli-style, lock up and throw away they key, military bills; its every American who is awake.

We can also see with the signing of the NDAA, how, criminalizing millions of Americans can actually be seen as a good, economic, investment for federal government. Vicky Pelaez, writing for Global research.org, found that the prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. Its investors are on Wall Street. Her research shows that this multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like arriving in capitalisms very Nirvanah. Their workers can’t go on strike, take a holiday or receive any pay above a few cents an hour. If they don’t like the conditions, or the 25 cents an hour rate; they are locked up in isolation cells. A working model that is the ultimate Free Marketeers wet dream. A study by the Progressive Labor Party, accuses the prison industry of being

an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”

Still, business America isn’t gonna listen to those mamby pamby Commies! To date 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations. Big name brands have fallen over themselves to take advantage of the slave labour. The list of companies operating inside state prisons is a ‘Who’s Who’ of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Macy’s, Target Stores, and many more. And no wonder such big name brands are wetting their Pierre Cardins (also investors) about this latest opportunity. Between 1980 and 1994, profits from prison labour went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion.

Perhaps Pelaez most chilling revelation though, is on the subject of the the kinds of goods which inmates are forced to produce whilst incarcerated. According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of – wait for it – all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens.

Yes folks. In an irony that must have Zionist oligarchs and US warmongers chuckling all the way to the (Swiss) bank. Soon, American jails can be filled with anti war protestors, forced to make war supplies. Don’t it just tickle ya pink? Or perhaps blue…

Back where we began, in Palestine, the Occupied people there have had six decades to get used to being forced to FINANCIALLY contribute to the military regime that locks generation after generation of young men away from their society. Israel’s occupation government routinely makes money out of human misery and injustice. As in America, one of the fastest growing industries in Israel today
is, private security. In recent years, many military responsibilities have been handed over to private, civilian companies. Security firms guard illegal settlements and construction sites all over the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem.

We’ve come full circle.

By signing the NDAA, out of admiration for the Zionist policy of locking up civilians who resist oppression; President Barak Obama will, I predict, in fact, awaken Americans to Israel’s legacy, in the USA – bankruptcy and injustice.

First they came for the Palestinians, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Palestinian.
Then they came for the Arabs, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not an Arab.
Then they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Muslim.
Then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak for me…